Memory's Wraiths
by irishais
Summary: War made skeletons of men...memory took the skeletons and made them wraiths.


Sometimes, the hardest thing was just...letting go.

The photograph flittered away on the wind, and he watched it fly...it felt like forever. The slick paper twisted and twirled in the wind...it seemed to not want to leave him, flying back past his cheek and he almost..._almost_ reached out and grabbed it, but he commanded his hand to stay at his side, a tightly clenched fist. He wanted to let go.

He _wanted_ to let go. He didn't want to hear her voice, see her face, know her walk...he didn't want those memories, those clips of her and her domineering attitude going through his mind all the time...a constant loop of images and sounds and memory...he wanted her out of his head, out of his life, out of him forever.

He wanted her gone, but he knew, _knew_ that she would stay with him forever, clinging to his brain and burrowing beneath the layers of "now" to haul the parts of her he had tried so hard to lock away. He didn't want her there. She was the reason he was standing here, casting pictures to the wind and being sentimental, no matter how masochistic this particular sentimentality was. She was probably the reason he was standing, period. She had enabled him, infused him with a power he hadn't known since forever. She had twisted and manipulated and wound him around her finger until he was merely a puppet. Still, he had been left standing.

Somehow, he had missed that the entire time. He had missed the idea that his actions were not what _he_ wanted to do, but perhaps they were all _her_. She had commanded, he had obeyed. Silly knight...knights always obeyed their queens.

She was a queen. She was not a mere princess, not like the other sorceress. She was a _queen_. An empress, even. Her orders were to be obeyed without thought, without question. She had controlled him, and he hadn't known it until she had finally cast him into a lifetime of his memories and agonies and tore him to shreds until he had found himself back...back where it all started. The beginning, and the end, and the life in between.

And now he was here. Casting pictures to the wind. Princesses and knights and sorcery...it was like a warped fairy tale and he was fairly certain there was not going to be a happily-ever-after. There never was, and anyone who said otherwise was selling something.

The photograph finally settled on a direction, and whipped out of sight. He searched for it for a while, hoping that somehow, there would be relief. There was nothing, just that heavy weight he had been carrying for so long, ever since...he stopped himself. He didn't want to remember. That was why he had come up here in the first place, wasn't it? To forget?

She would never let him forget, nor would she let him ever be happy.

Reformed sorceress.

Reformed mother.

Reformed...matron. The word felt vile to him, even in his mind, and when he opened his mouth to try to say it aloud, he found that he simply felt sick.

Put on a facade and pretend that it was okay, that he could tolerate being in the same country as her. Put on that mask so no one could see that he hadn't slept properly in a year. Put on the fake brass and ballsy attitude, and no one would question his authority. Put up that shield and no one could touch him.

The wind snatched up the next thing he tossed, a scrap of paper with a crude crayon drawing on it. She had praised him for it, he thought. It had been proclaimed one of her favorites and hung up next to the others' infinitely better artwork, in a place of honor on the refrigerator.

He wiped his hand on his pants as the drawing sailed away over the world. He felt tainted touching it...had the power rumbled in her even then?

_Liberi fatali..._

_This is not a cradle. Sleep does not advance_.

Nausea.

He crouched on the ground, pressing his forehead to the cold metal railing.

_Awaken yourselves from sleep. _

There was no hope. No hope left in this world for him. No dreams to ponder, no peaceful nights.

Nothing. There was nothing.

Just darkness, and memory, and agony. War and battle and death.

War made skeletons of men, shadows and wraiths of men.

Memory caused broken spirits.

Darkness...Darkness stripped away all that he was, all that he had been. All of his former glory and left him with his traitorous mind and his pictures on the wind.

And her.

Always her.

_Kindle to ash the evil of the spirit_.

Sometimes, the hardest thing was just...letting go.

* * *

AN: FFVIII--totally not mine. 


End file.
